Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development
The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (Japanese: 任天堂 情報開発本部 Hepburn: Nintendō Jōhō Kaihatsu Honbu?, lit. Nintendo Information Development Division) (or Nintendo EAD) division, formerly Nintendo Research & Development 4 (or Nintendo R&D4), is the largest division inside Nintendo. It was preceded by the Creative Department (クリエイティブ課 Kurieitibu Ka?), a team of designers with an art background responsible for many different tasks, to which Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka originally belonged.23 Both developers currently serve as managers of the EAD studios and are credited in each game developed by the division, with varying degrees of involvement. EAD is best known for its work on games in the Mario, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, and Pikmin franchises. History Background During the 1970s, when Nintendo was still predominantly a toy company, the company decided to expand into the interactive entertainment and video game industry and hired several designers to work under the Creative Department, which at the time was then the only development department at Nintendo. Among these new designers was Makoto Kano, which went on to design various Game & Watch games, and Shigeru Miyamoto, which would create various Nintendo franchises in the future. In 1972, the department was renamed to Research & Development Department and had about 20 employees. The department was later consolidated into a division and separated into three departments, Nintendo R&D1, R&D2 and R&D3. 1983–1989: Creation as Research & Development 4 The success of Shigeru Miyamoto's Donkey Kong arcade game was a deciding factor in the creation of Nintendo R&D4. After the success of Donkey Kong, a game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, the then Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that in addition to the already existing research and development departments he would create a new development department focused around Miyamoto, who would later become one of the most recognized video game designers in the world. In 1983, the Nintendo Research & Development 4 (abbreviated to Nintendo R&D4) department was officially created, appointing Hiroshi Ikeda, former president of Toei Animation, as General Manager with Shigeru Miyamoto acting as chief producer. Nintendo also drafted a couple of key graphic designers to the department including Takashi Tezuka and Kenji Miki. With the arcade market dwindling, Nintendo R&D1's former focus, the department concentrated most of their software development resources on the emerging handheld video game console market, primarily thanks to the worldwide success of Nintendo's Game Boy. This catapulted the R&D4 department to become the lead software developer for Nintendo home video game consoles, developing a myriad of games for the Family Computer home console (abbreviated to Famicom, known as Nintendo Entertainment System in the North America, Europe and Australia). Hiroshi Ikeda’s creative team had many video game design ideas, but was lacking the necessary programming power to make it all happen. Toshihiko Nakago and his small company Systems Research & Development (abbreviated to SRD) had its expertise in computer-aided design (CAD) tools and was very familiar with the Famicom chipset, and was originally hired to work with Masayuki Uemura’s Nintendo R&D2 to internally develop software development kits. When Nintendo R&D2 and SRD jointly began porting over R&D1 arcade games to the Famicom, Shigeru Miyamoto took the opportunity to lure Nakago away from R&D2, to help Miyamoto create his first Nintendo R&D4 video game, Excitebike. And so the original R&D4 department became composed of Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Kenji Miki, and Minoru Maeda handling design; Koji Kondo, Akito Nakatsuka, and Hirokazu Tanaka handling sound and music; and Toshihiko Nakago and SRD became the technology and programming core. One of the first games developed by the R&D4 department was Mario Bros., produced and directed by Miyamoto. The department was, however, unable to program the game with such an inexperienced team, and so counted with programming assistance from Gunpei Yokoi and the R&D1 department. One of the first completely self-developed games was Super Mario Bros., the sequel to Mario Bros. The game set standards to the platform genre and went on to be both a critical and commercial success. In 1986 R&D4 developed, among others, The Legend of Zelda for which Miyamoto again served as a director. The phenomenal sales of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda fueled the expansion of the department with young game designers such as Hideki Konno, Katsuya Eguchi, Kensuke Tanabe, Takao Shimizu, who would later become producers themselves, as well as several other designers. 1990–2002: Renamed to Entertainment Analysis & Development In 1989, during the Super Nintendo Entertainment System era, the Nintendo R&D4 department expanded and was renamed Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (abbreviated to Nintendo EAD). The department spun off its development duties into two groups: the Software Development Group, which focused on video game development and was led by Shigeru Miyamoto; and Technology Development Group, which focused on programming and developing tools and was led by Takao Sawano. The technology group was born out of several R&D2 engineers that were assisting SRD with software libraries. The group later helped Argonaut Games develop the Super FX chip technology for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, first used in Star Fox. This venture allowed the Technology Development Department to become more prominent in the 3D era, where they programmed and coprogrammed several of Nintendo EAD’s 3D games with SRD. In 1997, Miyamoto explained that about twenty to thirty employees were devoted to each Nintendo EAD title during the course of its development.4 It was then that he also disclosed the existence of the SRD programming company within the division, formally Nintendo R&D2's software unit, which was composed of about 200 employees with proficiency in software programming.4 In 2002, Nintendo opened a Nintendo EAD studio in Tokyo, appointing Takao Shimizu as manager of the branch. The studio was created with the goal of bringing in fresh new talent from the capital of Japan who wouldn't be willing to travel hundreds of miles away to Kyoto. Their first project was to work on a new Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the GameCube which made use of the DK Bongos, initially created for Donkey Konga. 2003–present: Restructure and new managers The exterior of the Nintendo Central Office in Kyoto, Japan. Until 2014, it housed the Nintendo EAD Kyoto branch. On September 30, 2003, as a result of a corporate restructure Nintendo was undergoing, in which several members of the Nintendo R&D1 and R&D2 were reassigned under Nintendo EAD, the department was consolidated into a division and began welcoming a new class of managers and producers.5 Hideki Konno, Katsuya Eguchi, Eiji Aonuma, Hiroyuki Kimura, and Tadashi Sugiyama were appointed project managers of their own groups within the Software Development Department; Takao Shimizu was appointed project manager of the Tokyo Software Development Department; and Keizo Ota and Yasunari Nishida were appointed project managers of their own groups in the Technology Development Department. In 2013, Katsuya Eguchi was promoted Department Manager of both Software Development Departments in Kyoto and Tokyo. As such, he abandoned his role as Group Manager of the Kyoto Software Development Group No. 2 and was replaced by Hisashi Nogami. On June 18, 2014, the EAD Kyoto branch was moved from the Nintendo Central Office (Nintendo's corporate headquarters) to the new Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto, Japan. The building is seven floors high and has a one floor basement, and currently houses more than 1100 developers from all of Nintendo's internal research and development divisions, which include the Nintendo EAD, SPD, IRD and SDD divisions. Chronology * 1983 – The creative department was created and named Nintendo Research & Development 4, and Shigeru Miyamoto was assigned manager and producer. * 1989 – The department was renamed to Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development. * 2002 – The Nintendo EAD Tokyo branch was created. * 2004 – The department was consolidated into a division and several development groups were created, each with its own manager. * 2007 – A second development group in the EAD Tokyo branch was created, assigning Yoshiaki Koizumi as Group Manager. * 2013 – Katsuya Eguchi was promoted Department Manager of both Software Development Departments. * 2014 – The EAD Kyoto branch was moved from the Nintendo Central Office to the Nintendo Development Center. Structural hierarchy The General Manager of the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division is Shigeru Miyamoto, assisted by both Keizo Kato, the Assistant Manager and Takashi Tezuka, the Executive Officer. The division is split into three different departments: the Kyoto Software Development Department, which is split into five separate groups, and the Tokyo Software Development Department, which is split into two separate groups, both supervised by Deputy Manager Katsuya Eguchi; and the Technology Development Department which is split into two separate teams in Kyoto, supervised by Deputy Manager Takao Sawano. All of these groups work concurrently on different projects.6 Collectively these officers are responsible for green lighting software titles and hardware peripherals, managing prototypes, allocating development resources, and managing budgets. Below is a schematic overview of the internal structure of the Nintendo EAD division after the restructuring process made on September 30, 2003.